The Sweeter One
by M.D. Owen
Summary: A father and daughter's tense ride home.


"I haven't heard this song in sixty years! Dad, turn it up." The gentle atmosphere in the Toyota Rav nose-dived into a vacuum of a man's gravelly voice distorting through the speakers. Casey wasn't even able to touch the knob before Shadow's bony fingers cranked it to maximum deafness. He wrinkled his eyebrows and remembered the forlorn days of his youth when he liked that sort of musical trash. More like some dude thrashing his testicles across a microphone.

"You're fifteen," he muttered, and while staring dryly in his daughter's direction, he swerved the car and barely missed a daredevil squirrel and a kid on his bike. Not much could send Casey's heart from his chest other than gunning down children. He had a slight panic attack, gripping at the steering wheel and rubbing his sweaty, free hand through his thinning hair.

Shadow killed the noise in the car. "You almost ran over that kid. What's the matter with you today? You were flipping out over your toast crunch this morning."

He took deep breaths and regained control of the wheel, easing his foot on the accelerator. He decided to be interested in the empty space behind the car.

"Don't do that shit, Dad. You always avoid me or Mom."

He didn't have time to rebuke before she plugged her earphones in and dismissed the world, but he decided to talk anyways, not missing a single corner of his feelings. "I keep telling you and April that I don't miss him, that I'm really okay after all this time, but this month has hit me hard. There are only a few dates I'll never forget: the day you were born, the day April and I married, and the day I met the best buddy I ever had who gave me the best family I ever had.

"I was watching an old movie with Bruce Willis, you probably don't know who he is; he had a good song in the eighties and married Demi Moore and I had the biggest crush on her and was kinda jealous that Swayze put his hands all over her, but that was Raph's favorite movie. The Bruce Willis one, not Swayze. One of them I think. And we drank a lot of Mountain Dew and pop rocks because when I let Raph drink that one time, he went back to the Lair and pissed all over the couch thinking it was the toilet and Splinter just happen to sit in it because it was five in the morning and the news was on, and Splinter came to my house that day and made me more scared of him than my own daddy so we couldn't drink no more."

A ray of sunlight squeezed between the shorter houses on the road and tossed over Shadow's dark brown hair. He had to stop staring before another kid would be in a pine box.

"I might have told you this story, probably a hundred times: ol' Peanut was a hoodlum back in the old days and our punching bag on slow nights. He got into more trouble than that Justin Bieber but looked better. We felt sorry for Peanut one night because his girlfriend left him because he didn't stop doing drugs and she gave him a gift card and he said, 'how am I supposed to buy drugs with a gift card' and the hamburgers told us to shut up 'cuz we were laughing too loud. That was what we called the police." He stopped and laughed into his arm propped on the door. "So all three of us went to the pool hall and Peanut beat us so we had to give him a pass on the beating that night. It took all of Raph's might not to clobber the guy as soon as we were back on the street because Peanut tested us and shoved a young girl. She fell and a lot of weed dropped out of her boobs and Peanut stole them and took off. You know how I feel about drugs so don't do them, okay? Raph fought real hard to keep them off the street."

For the rest of the journey, the only sound came from Shadow's mp3 player. She never batted an eye and walked into the house before he did. April felt the breeze through the opened door and it abruptly ended when Shadow disappeared into her bedroom. Before April could greet her husband, the front door blocked the sunlight, and Casey's footsteps fell to the distant left of the house straight to his private room where, for the rest of the evening, he slept on his old torn couch and wished for those particular memories to live again. As he woke from a restless slumber, the night had arrived and the neon wall clock told him it was past his bedtime, a healthy eleven-fifteen. He sat up for a minute, tugging at a piece of folded fabric and suddenly chuckled out of nowhere. A steady, meaningful chuckle, something that gave him relief from the pressure and a lift into a night that didn't need any more tears.

The dense glow from the hallway greeted him with a small passing and guided him to a dark kitchen. His first instinct was to raid the fridge but something else caught his eye: a flash of colors on the wall, stretching towards the livingroom. April was always in bed by this time unless she left the television going. She was adamant about shutting stuff off so he smirked at the thought of waving a finger in her own face.

The back of whoever's head was smaller and rose shorter from the couch. If it hadn't been for that, he wouldn't have known it to be his daughter. His steps were quiet and unobtrusive as he joined her on the couch. This time, he could stare at her without distraction.

"He always said you were the sweeter one, Dad, and I never believed him."

Casey didn't catch her quick smile against the tv's faded drop into darkness. She turned her head in time for the light again.

"I see that now."


End file.
